China’s most wanted killed by police, becomes talk of the nation

Yesterday afternoon, Ministry of Public Security and Chongqing Municipal Government held a press conference to announce the crackdown of Zhou Kehua’s case, who committed a series of armed robbery and murder. Huang Wei, Vice Minister of Chongqing Ministry of Public Security, pointed out at the conference that Zhou Kehua was shot dead by a policeman, instead of committing suicide as rumored on the Internet. A Chognqing citizen was rewarded 600,000RMB for providing important clues to arrest Zhou Kehua.

Reports from Xiaoxiang Daily learned from the special investigation group yesterday that the police found bullets as well as two movie tickets when they cleared Zhou Kehua’s belongings.

4:30pm yesterday afternoon, Ministry of Public Security and Chongqing Municipal Government held a joint press conference at Chongqing Ministry of Public Security. Huang Wei, Vice Minister of Chongqing Ministry of Public Security, introduced to the media the cracking down of August 10th armed robbery and murder case. The conference announced that SuXiangYu (Jiangsu, Hunan, and Chongqing) armed robbery and murder serial cases were solved successfully. It was also confirmed that the armed murder of a soldier in Chongqing on Mar 19th, 2009 was also committed by Zhou Kehua.

9:34am on August 10th, in front of a Bank of China at Fengmingshan Kangju Garden, Shaba District, Chongqing, an armed gangster committed robbery and shot one person to death and two to injury. He grabbed the handbag of the female victim and ran away swiftly. At noon on the same day, a railway policeman sacrificed his life when he was investigating the suspect.

According to the police’s investigation, Zhou Kehua had been moving around in Chongqing, Hunan, and Jiangsu since 2004, and committed 10 armed robberies, killing 10 people, wounding 6 people, robbing huge amount of money and properties and an 81-1 automatic rifle.

After Zhou Kehua was shot to death, police captured one restructured Type 54 pistol, one 9mm pistol, three cartridge clips and 62 bullets. The dead man was confirmed to be Zhou Kehua via fingerprint and DNA tests. The two pistols were confirmed to be the ones used in SuXiangYu serial cases and Chongqing “319” case.

Zhou Jin, the policeman on the spot, claimed that Zhou Kehua was bleeding all over his body after he fell down. But he and Wang Xiaoyu retreated after they shot Zhou, and so the specific parts which were shot needed to be confirmed by physician and postmortem examination. “Anyway, we shot his vital parts on the body. Zhou Kehua started to twitch after he fell down and died after a while.”

However, after Zhou Kehua’s death, the question whether Zhou Kehua killed himself or was he killed by the police trigger heated debate among netizens.

Some netizen posted entries on websites like Weibo and Tieba, claiming that around 6:30am, a resident at Tongjia Bridge encountered Zhou Kehua when she passed by a leather shoe factory on her way back from the market. But the resident did not recognize Zhou till she saw the Wanted Notice on the wall. Since the resident did not have a cell phone, she called the police after she reached home. At that time, three policemen had been at around 10 meters away from Zhou Kehua. Zhou fired at them, injuring a policeman. The rest two policemen shot Zhou Kehua’s waist. Zhou Kehua knew that he had no chance to escape and so shot himself.

Ms. Tang, who lived close to the spot, also claimed that Zhou Kehua died from suicide. Ms. Tang claimed that she spotted the whole process when she passed by the leather shoe factory on her way back from the market on that morning. She said after the policemen wounded Zhou Kehua’s waist, Zhou shot himself on his head.

There was no Q&A section on yesterday’s press conference, and the spokesman said the reporters could raise questions after the conference. So an official from Ministry of Public Security who attended the conference was surrounded by reporters in a second. When answering the question about whether Zhou Kehua died from suicide or killed by the police, the official said, “I guarantee that he (Zhou Kehua) did not die from suicide.”

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More and more talks on the Internet about the death the most wanted of China. The following is a trending entry on Weibo questioning of the the photo posted by the media:

There are four highlights on this photo. First, no gloves were worn when collecting evidence. Second, using a normal plastic bag, instead of the special evidence bag. Third, what is this person’s identity? Medico legal physician? Policeman? Surprisingly, he has tattoos on both his arms. Fourth, he wore sandals and bracelets on such an important occasion.

Media flooded to interview Zhou Kehua’s mother after he was shot to death. It is understandable that the reporters wanted to dig out more news. Zhou Kehua was punished by the law. No matter how cruel he was and no matter how heinous he was, in his mom’s eyes, he was always the dearest person.. The death of Zhou Kehua must be a great pain to his mom, and so please let us not place her in a difficult position!

The fan did not cover the old lady’s face, but the conscience of media.

Zhou’s mom covered her face with a fan during the whole interview. She said she had not seen her son for quite a while, and could not remember the last time he came back. When asked whether her son brought her money or stuffs, she shook her head and denied, “Nope, he did not give me any money.” When she learned the death of Zhou Kehua, she was stunned for 20 seconds, and her hand holding the fan shivered slightly.